Read Online Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Green - Free Book Online Page B

together. He called his boss and said that he was sick. An adult doesn’t have to be sick to say that he is sick, but if a kid wants to stay home from school, he has to be sick.
    Or afraid of Halloween masks.
    We’re going to the pancake house on the Berlin Turnpike. Max likes the pancake house. It’s one of his four favorite restaurants. Max will eat at only four restaurants.
    A List of Max’s Four Favorite Restaurants
     
     
     
International House of Pancakes.
Wendy’s (Max can’t eat at Burger King anymore because his father once told him a story about a customer eating a fish sandwich with a bone in it and now Max is worried that everything at his father’s Burger King will have a bone in it).
Max Burger (there are actually a bunch of Max restaurants, with names like Max Fish and Max Downtown, and Max thinks it’s great that they share his name. But Max’s parents brought him to Max Burger first, and now it’s the only one where he will eat).
The Corner Pug.
     
    If Max goes to a new restaurant, he cannot eat. Sometimes he even gets stuck. It’s hard to explain why. To Max, the pancakes at the pancake house on the Berlin Turnpike are pancakes, but the pancakes at the diner across the street aren’t really pancakes. Even though they look the same and probably taste the same, they are a completely different food for Max. He would tell you that the pancakes across the street at the diner are pancakes, but not his pancakes.
    Like I said, it’s hard to explain.
    ‘Do you want to try blueberries in your pancakes today?’ Max’s father asks.
    ‘No,’ Max says.
    ‘Okay,’ Max’s dad says. ‘Maybe next time.’
    ‘No.’
    We sit quietly for a while, waiting for the food to come. Max’s dad flips through the menu even though he has already ordered his food. The waitress stuck the menus behind the syrup when Max and his dad were done ordering, but Max’s dad took one back out as soon as she left. I think he likes to have something to look at when he doesn’t know what to say.
    Max has a staring contest with me. We do this a lot.
    He wins the first game. I get distracted when a waitress drops a glass of orange juice on the floor.
    ‘Are you happy to have the day off from school?’ Max’s father asks just as we are beginning another staring contest. His father’s voice startles me and I blink.
    Max wins again.
    ‘Yes,’ Max says.
    ‘Do you want to try trick-or-treating tonight?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You wouldn’t have to wear a mask,’ Max’s dad says. ‘No costume at all if you don’t want.’
    ‘No.’
    I think that Max’s dad sometimes gets sad talking to Max. I can see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. The more they talk, the worse it gets. His shoulders slump. He sighs a lot. His chin sinks into his chest. I think that he thinks that Max’s one-word answers are all his fault. Like he is to blame for Max not wanting to talk. But Max doesn’t talk unless he has something to say, no matter who you are, so if you ask him only yes or no questions, you’re going to get only yes or no answers.
    Max doesn’t know how to chat.
    Actually, Max doesn’t want to know how to chat.
    We sit in silence again. Max’s dad is looking at the menu.
    An imaginary friend enters the restaurant. He’s walking behind a set of parents and a little girl with red hair and freckles. The imaginary friend actually looks a lot like me. He looks almost like a human person, except his skin is yellow. Not a little yellow. Yellow like someone painted him with the yellowiest yellow they could find. He’s also missing eyebrows, which is pretty common for imaginary friends. But otherwise he could pass for a human person, if anyone except for the little redhead and I could see him.
    ‘I’m going to check out the kitchen,’ I say to Max. ‘Make sure it’s clean.’
    I do this a lot when I want to explore. Max likes it when I make sure places are clean.
    Max nods. He’s drumming his fingers on the table in